WC, C&H are good, usually smaller plants though, but order 5 and get 1 free usually. Hausermanns has nice plants, I've ordered from them a couple of times in the last year and I was impressed both times. EOoM is one of my favorite vendors, a little expensive on shipping but I've always got very nice sized plants for very good prices from them. I've not ordered from the others, but if you do order from Al's, let us know how it goes. (Like CJ, I've checked out his site many times, but have never ordered...) Good luck and enjoy! Bob

For sure my tricolour carnosa. I purchased it as a little 2 inch starter with no more than eight leaves. Two years later it bloomed for the first time. I've been told that's quite remarkable. IDK... Only one peduncle at first, then two. The following year it put on another 3 peduncles, I knocked one off, and I was practically suicidal over it. This past year, was it's third year blooming at almost 5 y/o & it put out a vine that had a peduncle at every node, for like 3 or 4 nodes in a row! My lovely starts her blooming season in March, and runs thru to early November. It will form buds, bloom, then I will notice a week after the flowers have dried and fallen off, the peduncle will start budding up again! This year was quite a show. It started slowly with one peduncle budded up, and one by one they all sprang to life. I had buds and blooms of all stages on one plant. It was something! I'm anticipating this spring. I've taken cuts, and given away pots. Funny, I got two more of the same, shortly after this one, and I never got them to bloom. I put both little ones together in a 4 inch basket, and didn't see much. These two had a very rough start, mindu. They were pretty much given to me by the florist, because when she went to give them to me, they were dropping leaves like mad. Poor babies got pushed away from the window, and didn't get watered for a very long time. So I just gave them both in the 4 inch basket to my sis-in-law this summer. I needed to make some space! Love them so much, I bought one for my MIL for Mother's day, to replace her sad pothos that was disposed of. Perfect for her, I told her it was much easier to love than the old stringy pothos! Other than that, I love my lacunosa from Pike Lake Greenhouses. It is budded up and blooming constantly. It's not much for a lot of new foliage growth, as it seems like it'd rather grow new peduncles instead. I only got it in mid summer, but since it's settled in, its always budding or blooming.

I ran across their name for the first time in another post earlier today. I'm not sure if it was GW or DG, as I am all over both. Consequently, after looking at their website, I placed an order for a few lilies, dahlias and glads. (I thought I was DONE ordering) They had several lilies I'd been looking for and couldn't find elsewhere. Prices are great and I wish I'd found them before placing some of my other orders. Guess we'll see what we get!

Thanks for your advice, oakhill. The plants in question are zone-appropriate and dormant container plants, but they are rather young. Many/most are evergreens, and the function of the house would be to protect them from dessicating winter winds and perhaps a modicum of temperature protection. I intend to use overwintering cloth. With polycarbonate I would be afraid things might get to warm and trigger the plants to come out of dormancy too soon. Until now I have used my unheated garage for overwintering. In the garage, it's typically five to ten degrees above outside temp., but it never seems to get much below 20 *F, even though we sometimes dip into single digits and very rarely beneath zero. More importantly, temps in the garage are something of an daily average and night/day fluctuations are moderated. This has worked great for me, but I'm running out of space and looking for a more room. The hope is that the hoop house would perform similarly.